Whetting the Appetite

Crises of Faith by Elizabeth L. Brooks-1

Crises of Faith by Elizabeth L. Brooks

The c**k churned in her and Faith made the noises the c**k’s owner expected, but in truth, she barely felt it. It couldn’t touch the burning, couldn’t slake the need.

She’d tried, God’s witness, she had. The burning had come on her along with her moonblood, but she’d pushed it from her thoughts, concentrated on her crafts and her skills and her lessons, and she’d held it off two full years before her oldest brother had caught her trading kisses with one of his cronies behind the gooseberry patch. She hadn’t lied, not quite, but she’d let Thom and their parents think it had gone further than that, and before another year was out she’d been wed to Nicholas.

The first weeks had been jolly, but then Nick had lost interest and Nick’s mam had started ordering her about like a drudge, and the next few years had been a misery of scullion work and a burning that never left her, not even when Nick would get drunk enough to remember the wife that warmed his bed and come home from the pub to put his c**k in her.

She’d tried to be good, but when Nick’s da had died, his widow took to beating Faith in addition to just harping at her, and so Faith had taken her best dress and run away. She’d let the man who drove the haycart put his c**k in her in exchange for a ride up to the city, when she cut the hem off her dress and took up with Singing Jenny, the two of them selling what they had to sell in the sidestreets and alleys.

None of the men touched the burning, though. She’d tried to relieve it herself, but her own hands only stoked the fire.

The c**k’s owner grunted and jerked, and then tossed a few pennies on Faith’s bodice before he pulled out. Faith didn’t move until he was gone, though the soft stir of air on her nether parts fanned the flames. When the shadows were still again, Faith mechanically tucked away the pennies and wiped off the cooling seed and smoothed her skirts down over her legs before resuming her stroll through the alley.

Hands caught her waist from behind, and she managed not to sigh tiredly as she leaned back into the embrace. “Shilling a—” she started and then gasped as she realized there was no man at her back.

“Shh,” the woman whispered into Faith’s ear. Her hands cupped Faith’s breasts through the stiff bodice, and Faith let out a quiet whimper as the burn grew hotter. The woman purred and one of her hands tugged up Faith’s skirts.

The woman’s skin was hot, even through the layers of cloth between them. When she had pulled Faith’s skirts up enough to reach beneath, her fingers against Faith’s thigh were like branding irons, hotter even than the burning. Faith jerked away, but the woman’s other hand was still on her breast, holding her in place with a strength Faith could barely comprehend.

Her mouth closed on Faith’s bare neck, dropping searing kisses as she nuzzled aside the high collar, exposing Faith’s shoulder. Her hand was between Faith’s thighs now, dipping into the gushing well there. The c**k Faith had barely felt had been thick, but the woman pushed a slender finger up inside, and the burning—! It didn’t lessen, but it moved, like a living thing, as if this woman’s touch commanded it. Faith shuddered and surrendered to the woman’s touch, leaning back against that soft chest, opening her legs wider.

That finger f****d Faith’s hole until Faith was gasping, all but sobbing. The woman’s mouth closed on her shoulder again, and Faith felt the barest scrape of teeth against her skin before the woman’s iron-hot fingers closed on the nubbin at the front of her secret parts, grasping it gently but firmly even though Faith herself was convulsing as the fire burst free and spread over her whole body, leaking out her toes and her fingers and into the woman’s mouth at her shoulder…

As Faith came to herself, the woman purred again. Faith could feel the cool tracks of tears on her cheeks and her chest still ached from the speed of her breath. The fire was returning already; Faith could feel its tingle deep in her nether parts.

“Yes,” the woman whispered, her lips grazing Faith’s ear. “We’re both so hungry. Let us feast, my darling.” Her fingers still held Faith’s nub, but now they started to move, to circle, to rub, to stroke. Her teeth grazed Faith’s shoulder again, and the hand at Faith’s breast seemed to move through the fabric to stroke and pinch at her taut n****e. Faith stretched up on her toes, her hips gyrating against the woman’s movements, trying to beg for something she hadn’t known could exist.

The burning engulfed her secret parts and spread until Faith felt she must be consumed by it. She laid her head back against the woman’s shoulder, not merely surrendering to but embracing that unholy touch, desperate for that moment of surcease and freedom. When her release came a second time, the woman bit her shoulder and sucked hard, and it seemed the burning of Faith’s need was being pulled out of her, into the woman’s mouth, and irrationally, Faith wanted to follow.

“My darling,” the woman rasped, not taking her lips from Faith’s shoulder, “you are a treasure, an absolute—” But the fire was returning now, though more sluggishly than before, and Faith boldly laid her hands over the woman’s and pressed. Asking. Demanding.

Five, eight, ten times, the woman quenched Faith’s fires in that dark alley; at the end, Faith was too exhausted to even stand, but the burning—the burning was gone, quenched, finally. The woman half-carried Faith up the dark stairs to the apartment, but it wasn’t until she laid Faith on the narrow bed and began to draw up the coverlet that Faith protested. “Take me with you,” Faith begged hoarsely, trying to gather the strength to throw back the counterpane and managing only to lift a hand.

The woman kissed Faith’s brow and smoothed the bedclothes. “Fear not, my treasure,” she whispered, “I’ll return soon, and we’ll feed again.”

And so it was. Every night, just as Faith had begun to despair, after a day of c***s that had failed to touch the burning in her, the woman would appear—always from behind; Faith never saw the streets she traveled—and embrace her, and Faith would gasp in surprise before surrendering to those soft, white arms, twining her fingers in that silky, blonde hair, staring up into those sapphire eyes.

The woman never asked Faith to touch her in return. When Faith offered, the woman would laugh and say that her hunger was only for Faith’s pleasure, which Faith was surely happy enough to give her. Every night, the woman would take Faith’s burning into herself, if only briefly, like a chimney flue drawing up the flames. Every night, the woman would quench her fires, exhausting Faith to the point of collapse, then take her home and tuck her into bed. Every night, Faith would beg the woman to take her when she left, or to stay, but every night, the woman shook her head and left Faith there alone, and in the morning, the burning had returned.

Three months in, or mayhap it was four, the woman brought another with her. Faith didn’t realize it until she’d been taken three or four times, until the fog of the burning had begun to thin enough that she realized the woman was talking with someone else.

“Women are risky,” Faith heard.

“Not this one,” the woman said. “It’s not simply a longing. She has the true fire in her loins.” The woman’s hand was on her breast, kneading, pulling at her n****e, but her hand between Faith’s thighs was still, and Faith lost track of the conversation as she pulled at the woman’s arm and twisted her hips, gyrating in desperate need for relief.

Then there was another woman in front of her, a woman Faith had never seen before. She had hair the color of midnight and eyes to match. Dimly, Faith wondered if she might be a Gypsy, but her skin was white as a statue’s, and no wandering heathen would have such fine clothes, dress of dark grey lambswool over a chemise of black silk, her collar-broach a golden tree with an enameled apple in its branches, the same blood red as her lips. This new woman caught Faith’s chin—her touch seared like glowing coals—and looked deep into Faith’s eyes.

The blonde woman, Faith’s woman, moved again, finally, twisting her n****e, pulling at her nubbin as if she was milking it, and Faith’s wetness willingly flowed out of her until her pleasure overtook her. Her eyes usually closed in that moment of their own accord, but this time, her gaze was held by the black-haired woman, and it seemed the burning traveled not into the lips at her throat, as it had always done before, but up into her face, still held captive in the black-haired woman’s grip, and into the black-haired woman’s fingers.

“Oh, Jasmine,” the black-haired woman sighed. “You were right.”

“Thank you, m’lady,” Faith’s woman—Jasmine?—murmured.

The black-haired woman lifted her other hand, cradling Faith’s face. “Tell me, girl, what is it that you want?”

“M- M’lady?”

“I would have your service,” the woman said patiently. “And so I must know how I might purchase it.”

“What kind of service?” Faith asked, suddenly and inexplicably fearful.

“M’lady operates an assortment of, shall we say, gentlemen’s clubs,” Jasmine said, her breath wisping over Faith’s ear. Her fingers flicked idly over Faith’s breast, drew idle circles around her nubbin until Faith’s breath was coming again in short pants. “The work would be similar to your current trade, but you’d have no need to seek out clients in this squalor. M’lady takes care of her own, I promise you. I’m certain you would be quite popular with certain of our members.”

Faith writhed under Jasmine’s caresses, whimpering, but it seemed Jasmine would allow no more than this fanning of the fire until m’lady’s question was answered. “Would I be able to see you, still?” she finally blurted, wrenching her gaze from the black-haired woman’s and twisting her neck to look at Jasmine.

Jasmine looked surprised, and for an instant her features were haunted by a ghost of unease. The black-haired woman laughed.

“Such strength,” she purred. “Of course you shall see Jasmine as often as you like. Perhaps I will allow Jasmine to see to your training, once you are settled in, hm?”

“Oh, yes please, m’lady!” Faith gasped, and Jasmine rewarded her, pinching and stroking, finally releasing the fire to spread through her limbs. Faith’s climax came quickly and then stretched, on and on, drawn out of her, shudder by shudder, until so much of the fire had been drained out of her—into Jasmine’s lips at her shoulder, into m’lady’s fingers on her face—that she began to feel cold.

“And done,” the black-haired woman said, pure satisfaction making her words as thick as cream. “Come now, my dear, and we’ll see you settled as quickly as may be.”